Cuban carries banner of terrorist Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah on October 14th at official regime event in Havana (Screen grab)
On October 17, Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, the mastermind behind the October 7, 2023 terrorist massacre in Israel, was found and killed by Israeli soldiers. Israel National News is reporting that “Arab media outlets also covered Sinwar’s elimination, comparing him to Cuba’s Che Guevara.”
The Cuban dictatorship is a long time supporter of Hamas and Hezbollah, and enemy of Israel. thousands of Cuban soldiers invaded Israel in 1973 from the Syrian front during the Yom Kippur War.
Top ranking officials of the Cuban dictatorship had planned to hold a pro-Hamas march on the one year anniversary of the October 7th terrorist attack on Israel, but were delayed one week by Hurricane Milton.
The official march took place on October 14, 2024. During the Cuban dictatorship’s official “march in solidarity with Palestinians”, a banner of the late terrorist Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was captured on video.
In addition to Cuban president Miguel Diaz-Canel, and Cuban prime minister
The communist regime in Cuba has a decades long history of supporting terrorism in the Middle East, and around the world.
Israel National News, October 18, 2024
“End of a bloodthirsty leader” | How the world covered Sinwar’s elimination
Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar’s death makes international headlines, cover pages, as angles range from praise of Sinwar to stressing his brutality.
Leading newspapers and websites around the world have given prominent coverage to the IDF’s elimination of mass murderer and archterrorist Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar.
Sinwar was the mastermind behind the October 7 massacre in Israel, and refused multiple times to agree to a prisoner swap deal that could end the war and the suffering of both Gazan and Israeli civilians.
Arab media outlets also covered Sinwar’s elimination, comparing him to Cuba’s Che Guevara.
The Wall Street Journal placed Sinwar’s death as its top story, but implied that Israel could declare the war over even without fully defeating Hamas. Its story was titled, “After Sinwar’s Death, Israel Has Stark Choice: Declare Victory or Keep Fighting,” and it noted internal Israeli discussions on the matter. Its second-most prominent story covered the elimination itself.
The New York Times also covered the elimination, titling its main headline, “Chance Encounter Led to Hamas Leader’s Death,” and featuring at the top of its website eight additional articles on the elimination.
The New York Post took a more moderate approach, noting that Israel had come full circle with one of its most dangerous enemies.
The Financial Times‘ headline read, “Hamas mastermind of October 7 attacks killed in Gaza, says Israel.’ It noted that Sinwar’s death may be “pivotal” and that it raises hope for the hostages’ release.
The French Liberation chose to emphasize Sinwar’s brutality, writing on its cover page: “Yahya Sinwar, the inciter of October 7 – the end of a bloodthirsty leader.” A BBC analysis was titled, “Bowen: Sinwar’s death is serious blow to Hamas, but not the end of the war.”
Al-Akhbar, a news outlet affiliated with Hezbollah, titled its article, “The Commander Who Fought,” featuring a photo of Sinwar with graphics reminiscent of Che Guevara.
Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, based in Qatar, wrote, “Details of Sinwar’s elimination as the occupation announced it: He fought until his last breath.”
The London-based Saudi outlet Asharq Al-Awsat wrote, “By chance, the creator of the Toophan was killed,” published alongside a photo of Sinwar’s body being brought out of the building he was killed in. “Toophan al-Aqsa” is the Arabic name for the October 7 massacre.
According to a preliminary investigation, on Wednesday morning, a soldier noticed a suspicious individual leaving and entering a building in Rafah, and the forces opened fire on the building. At 3:00 p.m., the forces identified three individuals leaving and walking between the buildings. The soldiers fired at the terrorists, and a tank fired at the building where the terrorists hid.
An IDF drone sent into the building identified an individual sitting in a chair. The individual, later identified as Sinwar, saw the drone approach and threw a piece of wood at it. An additional tank round was fired at the building.
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/397776
Jewish Breaking News, October 15, 2024
Cuba’s Dictator Leads Anti-Israel March
JBN News, October 15, 2024
Havana’s streets erupted in a sea of Palestinian flags on Monday as Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel led hundreds in a charged march in support of Hamas.
The demonstration, featuring some 250 Palestinian medical students studying in Cuba, saw Diaz-Canel and his cronies donning keffiyeh scarves while parading behind a banner reading “Long live free Palestine.”
Originally scheduled for the anniversary of the Hamas’ October 7 massacre, the march was postponed due to Hurricane Milton. A delay that did nothing to temper the event’s anti-Israel fervor.
“We are here to support the just claim of the Palestinian people, for their sovereignty, their freedom against the genocidal crusade that Israel practices towards the Palestinian people,” Michel Marino, a 20-year-old international relations student, told AFP.
Notably absent from the Cuban government’s fictitious narrative was any mention of the Hamas attack that killed over 1,200 Israelis and took 251 hostages. While Diaz-Canel grandstands on the world stage, joining South Africa’s lawsuit against Israel at the ICJ, his regime continues to stifle dissent and basic freedoms at home.
Thousands of starving Cubans took to the streets back in march to demand better living conditions amid persistent blackouts and food scarcity. Despite the severity of these conditions, Diaz-Canel has made no substantive economic reforms, instead opting to hand out harsh and lengthy prison sentences to perceived threats.
The Hill, October 25, 2023
Cuba’s dictatorship has a serious problem with Jews
by John Suarez
On Oct. 7 Hamas terrorists killed more than 1,200 Israelis, wounding over 3,360, and launching over 6,300 rockets. Hamas raiders entered Israel, murdering, raping, and kidnapping civilians.
In a formal statement released that same day, the Cuban Foreign Ministry blamed Israel and its “accomplice,” the U.S., for the violence. In so doing, it continues to spread a false narrative that originates in Soviet-era anti-Israel propaganda.
Cuban officials have been meeting over the last year with high-ranking officials from Iran and Hamas. Iran’s Foreign minister Hossein Amirabdollahian visited Cuba and met with Cuban president Miguel Diaz-Canel on Feb. 5 “for talks on issues of mutual interest and international topics,” according to a statement from the Islamic Republic’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
On Feb. 25, Middle East Monitor reported that a Hamas delegation publicly visited the Cuban Ambassador in Lebanon. In that meeting, Ambassador Jorge Leon Cruz recognized “the legitimate right of the Palestinians to defend their land….The Palestinians are fighting for a just cause.”
On June 15, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi publicly met with his Cuban counterpart, Miguel Diaz-Canel, in Havana.
In short, both the terrorist group Hamas and its chief patron, Iran, have close relations with Cuba’s communist regime. The Cuban dictatorship aids terrorists in the Middle East, allows Hezbollah to maintain a base in Cuba, and provides intelligence to Hamas.
Domestic antisemitism
The Cuban dictatorship also has a history of domestic antisemitism. Cuban officials in 2019 barred Jewish children from wearing kippahs in school. Fidel Castro in 1994 prohibited the importation of kosher meat into Cuba, despite allowing Halal food, which complies with Islamic dietary laws. Castro supported the 1975 UN resolution equating Zionism with racism and opposed its repeal in 1991.
From 1959 through 1973, Havana maintained diplomatic relations with Israel while supporting terrorism against Israelis. Castro hailed the establishment of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) in 1965 and established ties with the Palestinian Fatah in Algiers and Damascus. Castro introduced PLO members at the Tri-Continental Conference in Havana in January 1966. This conference backed revolutionary and terrorist organizations across Europe, the Americas, and Asia with the objective of changing the world order in an authoritarian direction.
Spreading KGB anti-Israel propaganda
The Soviet Union assisted the Arab states in the run-up to the Six Days War in 1967. In the aftermath of their defeat, the Soviets initiated an active-measures campaign that proved effective in creating a false narrative harmful to Israel and the U.S. Eli Cohen and Elizabeth Boyd explained one part of this campaign in a must-read 2019 paper, titled “The KGB and anti-Israel propaganda operations.”
Operation SIG was a KGB active measure designed to sow worldwide disapproval for the U.S. and Israel. SIG is the Russian acronym for Sionistskiye Gosudarstva, or “Jewish (or Zionist) Government.” This involved Soviet propaganda and military support on behalf of terrorist groups declaring Israel their enemy. This included increasing anti-Israel sentiment by disseminating anti-Zionist propaganda and using anti-Semitic tropes from Western culture.
This narrative is the one that the dictatorship in Havana continues to repeat right up to the present day.
Fidel Castro, for example, compared Israel to Nazi Germany on October 15, 1979. “From the bottom of our heart, we repudiated the merciless persecution and genocide that the Nazis once visited on the Jews,” he said. “But there is nothing in recent history that parallels it more than the dispossession, persecution and genocide that imperialism and Zionism are currently practicing against the Palestinian people.”
In 2014, Castro called Israeli efforts to defend themselves from Hamas terrorism “a repugnant new form of fascism,” and a “macabre genocide against the Palestinian people.”
Direct military action against Israel
The Cuban dictatorship’s hostility to Israel was not limited to rhetoric and its assistance to terrorists. Cuba also involved itself in direct military action.
Castro severed diplomatic ties with Israel on September 10, 1973, just days before the Yom Kippur War began. During that war, 3,000 Cuban soldiers participated in the attack on Israel, alongside forces from Egypt and Syria, and expeditionary forces from Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Jordan, Iraq, Libya, Kuwait, Tunisia, Morocco, and North Korea.
The publication Noticias de Israel provided an in-depth description of the role played by Cuba in this war. Havana conducted a secret operation to send military support to Syria. A tank brigade, helicopter pilots, communications agents, and intelligence and counterintelligence officers took part. The brigade was under General Leopoldo Cintra Frías’s command.
Soldiers left Cuba bound for Syria, dressed in civilian clothes, with forged passports identifying them as university students. Soviet military equipment, including T-62 tanks and SAM rocket artillery, were provided to them. In all, 3,000 Cubans took part in the war. Cuban tank crews fought alongside Syrian troops in their war of aggression.
According to Foreign Report, 180 Cubans were killed and 250 were injured in that conflict. The surprise factor resulted in significant losses for Israel, both in lives and military equipment. Civilian areas were also hit, with 2,800 Israelis killed and 8,800 wounded.
In short, the Castro regime has spent decades seeking the destruction of Israel, in both its rhetoric and its actions. Cuban officials have also discriminated against Cuban Jews, and spread anti-semitic tropes.
Havana has had and continues to have a problem with Jewish people.
John Suarez is executive director of the Center for a Free Cuba, and a human rights activist.
The American Spectator, June 21, 2021
It should be no surprise that communists and Islamists unite against free societies.
by John Suarez
June 21, 2021, 11:55 PM
Little noticed in the recent (or rather, current) fighting between Israel and Palestinian Hamas is that the latter has a cheering section not only in the Fifth Congressional District of Minnesota and New York’s 14th but also in Havana.
In the enemy of my enemy is my friend department, this should not surprise. People who hate America find ways of overlooking one another’s shortcomings, at least until the day when they fall out among themselves, which happens invariably with political thugs as well as ordinary thieves.
Palestinian Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, who claim to represent and speak for the Palestinian Arabs in Gaza and the West Bank (aka Judea and Samaria), have long enjoyed the support of Cuba’s communist regime. Many readers of The American Spectator probably do not realize how long a track record the Marxist-Leninists who oppress the Cuban people have entertained and collaborated with the Islamo-fascists who oppress the Palestinian people. This is true also of the mullahcrats who have been oppressing the Persian people since the overthrow of the Shah of Iran and the founding of the Islamic Republic.
Havana’s working relationships with Middle Eastern terrorist groups stretch back decades.
The Terrorist International
As early as 1965, Fidel Castro welcomed the founding of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and made contacts with the Palestinian FATAH in Algiers and Damascus. Castro introduced PLO members at the Tri-Continental Conference, held in Havana in January 1966. This conference, a cartel of political gangsters, supported revolutionary and terrorist groups in Europe, the Americas, and Asia.
Ilich Ramírez Sánchez attended the Tricontinental Conference with his father. Following the terrorist gathering, Ilich reportedly spent the summer at Camp Matanzas, a guerrilla warfare school run by Cuba’s general directorate of intelligence. He “went to Jordan in 1970 and fought with PLO guerillas against the Jordanian Army in what became known as the ‘Black September’ operation.”
This operation inspired the founding of a new terrorist group “Black September,” responsible for the Munich Massacre, in which 11 Israeli Olympic athletes were murdered. In the 1970s, after a string of terrorist attacks, Ilich became known as Carlos the Jackal. He continued committing murders for Palestinian terrorist groups until the French National Police caught him in Sudan on August 14, 1994. Placed on trial for the murder of two Paris policemen and an informant, Carlos was sentenced to life in prison, where he still is.
Havana maintained diplomatic relations with Israel from 1959 through 1973, even as it fully embraced terrorism against the Jewish nation. This seeming paradox is fully in keeping with international communist “diplomacy” since the Bolsheviks’ founding of the Comintern. The Bolsheviks made one of their first priorities the fomenting of “anti-imperialist” agitation and terror in Islamic lands.
Ending relations, invading Israel
Fidel Castro, notwithstanding the lack of issues between the two countries, broke relations with Israel on the eve of the Yom Kippur War of October 1973. This was required for all Soviet-aligned regimes, as the international communist line defined Israel as a colonial state and an arm of U.S. imperialism. The Soviet bloc viewed Israel as the aggressor in the Yom Kippur War, when the Arab states plus the terror wings they sponsored and promoted, notably but by no means exclusively among the Palestinians, attacked Israel on the holiest day of its year.
During the harrowing early days of fighting, the U.S. signaled to the Soviets that our forces were on red alert and would block any Soviet intervention on the Arab side. Fighting on three fronts and with an American logistical supply line, Israel’s armed forces took their counter-offensive across the Suez Canal and to the gates of Damascus.
During the fighting, Castro sent thousands of Cuban troops to support Egypt and Syria. Cuban combat troops remained in Syria until 1975.
Yasser Arafat, chairman of the PLO, made his first official visit to Cuba in 1974. According to Mansour Tahboub, former acting director of the Arafat Foundation, this was the first of up to eight trips to Cuba.
Training the PLO
Throughout the 1970s, Havana’s Intelligence Directorate (DGI) sent its agents to PLO camps in Lebanon to train and assist Palestinian terrorists. According to Tahboub, “The Cubans trained Palestinian cadres.” Between 1976 and 1982, the Central Intelligence Agency estimated that there were 300 Palestinians training in Cuban camps.
Bruno Eduardo Rodríguez Parrilla, a member of the Union of Young Communists in 1978, addressed a gathering at the University of Havana where he stated that “the attitude of the Zionist authorities was similar to Hitler’s hordes” who massacred millions of European Jews during Word War II. The speech was made on May 14, 1978, the 30th anniversary of the founding of Israel. Since 2009, Mr. Rodríguez Parrilla has been Cuba’s foreign minister.
Over 90 percent of Cuba’s Jewish community driven into exile
It is worth recalling in this regard that Cuba once had a vibrant, substantial Jewish community of 15,000, including 20th-century refugees from Hitler’s Germany. Over 90 percent have been driven into exile by the Castro regime’s anti-Zionism and its use of Holocaust-denial propaganda.
Arafat, Castro, and Syria’s Hafez al-Assad condemned Egypt’s signing of the 1978 Camp David Accords with Israel at the sixth Non-Aligned Summit in Havana in September 1979.
The demise of the Soviet Union did not put an end to the “unholy alliance” between self-proclaimed socialist, anti-imperialist regimes, and anti-Zionist Islamic regimes and their terrorist wards.
Contacts, cooperation, and mutual help have remained constant between not only Havana’s diplomats and operatives and those of Hamas (and others) but also between them and the mullahcrats in Tehran.
Thus it was no surprise to find Cuba’s party media and its international officials accusing Israel of aggression when it responded to Hamas’s rain of rockets a few weeks ago.
Cause for concern
This should be of concern to our foreign policy makers. President Obama tried to turn the page on a decades-long record of Castro-regime support for America’s enemies. The restoration of diplomatic relations between Washington and Havana was underway when the election of 2016 got in the way.
With Obama-era officials occupying high positions in the executive branch and anti-Israel supporters of Palestinian Hamas and like-minded organizations sitting in the House and the Senate, members of the Marxist–Islamic alliance evidently are testing the waters to see how far and how openly they can play their anti-Israel and anti-American cards.
Judging from the way the official Cuban media denounced Israel’s defensive measures without mentioning the barrage of fire they sent over Israel, it would appear they expect to play them without shame — especially when elected public officials in the Congress and Senate show them how.
John Suarez is the Executive Director of the Center for a Free Cuba. He has testified before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in Washington, D.C., the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, and before the U.S. Congress. Since 2009 he has maintained the blog “Notes from the Cuban Exile Quarter.”